Editorial: Asian health sector growth in the next decade—Optimism despite challenges ahead

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The Western Pacific and the Southeast WHO regions of Asia have a variety of economies, from middle-income India, Laos, and Myanmar to high-income OECD countries, such as Japan and South Korea. These regions are home to a sizable population and act as an epicenter of global manufacturing and industrial capacity (1).
While most of Asia was under colonial rule before World War II, it became the fastest-growing economic region of the world in recent decades, manifesting some of the world's longest economic booms, starting from Japan in the 1950s, to South Korea, China, and recently to India and the Tiger Cub Economies, such as Singapore and Malaysia (2). In contrast, these boomed economies later faced setbacks due to various reasons, such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which spread to the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) region (3), the contraction of the GDP in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the aftermath of the heavy inflow of foreign aid that was demanded following a tsunami and other disastrous natural calamities (4), the impact of the 2008-2009 global recession and its effects in Asian countries (5), and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. These caused multi-faceted economic effects in Central Asia (6), and other Asian countries.
In addition to these ups and downs, a meager proportion (approximately 4-7%) of total GDP has been invested in the health sector in most Asian countries, in comparison to approximately 12% or more of that in European countries, the United States, and other high-income countries. Increased health awareness leading to increased health demand has, directly and indirectly, pressurized the ruling governments in the region to invest in the health sector, leading to multiple and mixed avenues of different opportunities and challenges for health sector growth.
. /fpubh. .  Of the total 17 manuscripts accepted for this Research Topic, 14 are original research papers, two are reviews, and one is a perspective article. The manuscripts and total numbers are found under the following six themes: Primary Health Care (PHC) and Health Systems Development (HSD) (four manuscripts); (Health) insurance, governance, and universal health coverage (UHC) (four manuscripts); public health screening (two manuscripts); urban and green economics, and sustainability (two manuscripts); health care profession, ethics, and leadership (three manuscripts); and health tourism and migrants' health (two manuscripts). Geographic coverage is as follows: seven and two manuscripts are from China and Nepal, respectively, and one each represents Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Mongolia, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia ( Table 1).
The editors observed that shifting infrastructure development to less developed regions, focusing on women's empowerment, and guiding the referral system may enhance access to PHC and thereby advance health and social development (HSD); for which the non-state actors should work in close collaboration with the state. In order to achieve UHC, the health sector in the next decade is expected to grow and move beyond HSD. For this, in addition to financial and non-financial barriers to health insurance, alternative strategies to existing insurance schemes are crucial, including social health insurance (HI), as some Asian and African countries are moving closer to UHC by HI reforms (7,8); improved governance through localized employees; public health screening with cost-effective tools and strategies, such as portable ECGs and the gastric cancer risk score scale (GCRSS), which can be further .
/fpubh. . captivated with the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) (9) and may further help in reducing the ongoing catastrophic expenditures of households with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) (10); and the leadership skills and training of health care professionals. Another area of growth in the health sector is health tourism, for which patient satisfaction and enhancing the trust between the health professionals and the patient are warranted. Since domestic manufacturing is not meeting the ever-rising demand for medical services, which is visible in terms of more significant health and pharmaceutical expenditures (11) on equipment and medicines (12), cross-country health and medical tourism is inevitable. To meet this demand and intra-country unmet healthcare challenges in some countries while also seizing other markets, institutions should consider other informed solutions to solve conflicting interests between the pharma company and the health sector. Furthermore, economic resilience after the COVID-19 pandemic and maintaining the pro-green economies may contribute to the region's health sector growth and to its sustainability, including the ability to face challenges to meet sustainable development goals (13).

Conclusive remarks
The editors believe these valuable and diverse topic contributions might open new horizons of knowledge. Last but not least this is a unique opportunity to open the floor for a public debate on the Asian challenges through the lens of the Global South's health sector growth (12). The main goal of this Research Topic was to describe the progress made in the healthcare arena in Asian Emerging economies. A diverse group of authors coming from academia, industry, governing authorities, and professional associations attempted to provide a thorough overview of the status of the healthcare sector growth in Asian-Pacific economies (14). We hope that this collection of articles can trigger curiosity among aspiring Asian public health authorities, HTA experts, clinical physicians, economists, and public communities alike.

Author contributions
MJ and CA prepared the manuscript draft while MJ, CA, and LW revised it for important intellectual content. All authors fulfill ICMJE conditions for full authorship. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding
The Serbian part of this contribution has been co-financed through Grant No. OI 175014 of the Ministry of Education Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.